Well, it's an autograph session at a team event. The retired players don't have to do it. They agreed to be there. From my perspective, asking a player politely to use a certain pen and sign it in a certain place takes all of two seconds. I don't think it's too much to ask after spending decent money and waiting a couple hours. Plus making a simple request often helps a player, who has a bunch of different pens and markers in front him and often hesitates when deciding which one to use and where to sign an item on his own.

Personally, I find it warped that multi-millionaires play games with fans in such a setting. There's no reason why a player should be frustrated by an autograph request at a fan fest.

As far as autograph values go, I agree with Brian26 that it's not worth attending a fan fest to make money. In fact, I think the issue is not whether the player is increasing the value of the item, but whether the player is decreasing the value or even wrecking an item. I guess a good example is Thome giving his jag signature on a $500 bat. How would you feel if you paid $500 for the bat and now, should you need the money, you'd be lucky to get $250 for the bat because of the bad signature? In effect, Thome just screwed the guy out of $250. Way to go, multi-millionaire! You really showed one of your fans!!!

As far as sweet-spotting baseballs, it's simply the standard because a signature looks best there. If you have other balls in your collection, it would be nice if they all looked similar when displayed. It's just a collecting thing. The same kind of reasoning why collectors want Star Wars figures in their original packaging or old currency in uncirculated condition.

Collecting autographs can be a weird thing, but I wouldn't criticize it here because so can spending time and money watching men play a game over 100 times in a year and then spending more time reading and writing about it on a message board.

I'm pretty sure Jim Thome did not wake up that AM with the simple mission in mind to screw over people with a ****ed up signature on a piece of memorabilia.

Still don't understand how the math works in him screwing that one guy $250.